Generally, a fixed wireless telephone service is used as an alternative to wire line telephone service in rural or urban settings, particularly in developing countries. One way of providing a fixed wireless telephone service is to use a conventional cellular telephone system and couple it with a wire line telephone system to provide wireless service to fixed terminals throughout a geographic area.
There are obvious differences between a conventional cellular telephone system and a conventional wire line telephone system. For example, in a wire line telephone system, upon detection of the off hook condition in the communication device an audio line is directly coupled between a wire line telephone switch and the user's communication device. This audio line provides instant dialing services for the user and provides dial tone feedback to the user indicating service is available. In a conventional cellular system, a phone number is dialled and then an indicator or send button is depressed to transmit a message indicating to a central base station that a call or communication is desired. After a certain amount of delay a communication channel is allocated to the user and is routed directly to the dialed number. No direct dialing on the communication channel is allowed and the system does not provide dial tone feed back.
In order to provide a fixed wireless telephone service, it is desirable to emulate the service of a fixed wire line telephone service. Specifically, it would be advantageous to provide dial tone feedback and immediate connection to a telephone switch upon transmitting an off hook signal from a communication unit in a fixed wireless telephone system.